Australian Targets

Thursday, March 19, 2009

World Forests are disappearing rapidly according to the 2009 State of the World's Forests report by the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO). The report notes that expansion of large-scale monocultures of oil palm, soy and other crops for agrofuel production has been a key factor in the failure to halt deforestation.

Two leading environmental organisations, Friends of the Earth International and the Global Forest Coalition, have called on world governments to take immediate action to halt deforestation and forest degradation.

The report has also been criticised by these organisations on biofuels, illegal logging, and massive replacement of forests by large-scale tree plantations in many countries.

"Plantations are not forests", said Isaac Rojas, coordinator of the Forest and Biodiversity Program of Friends of the Earth International. "All over the world, plantations destroy the lands and livelihoods of local communities and Indigenous Peoples, as well as biodiversity and water resources. They also store far less carbon than natural forests."

"As they provide very little employment for rural people, tree plantations are also a major cause of rural depopulation and a further shifting agricultural frontier, thus causing the destruction of forests elsewhere," said Simone Lovera, managing coordinator of the Global Forest Coalition.

The report says that the current economic crisis has affected forests in a number of ways:

"The collapse of the housing sector has reduced the demand for a wide array of wood and wood products, leading to mill closures and unemployment. New investments are slowing as a result, affecting all wood industries."

"The demand for environmental services has also changed as a result of reduced ability and willingness to pay for such services. Carbon prices have remained highly volatile. Future climate change arrangements may face challenges as countries give priority to tackling the economic crisis."

"Potential negative impacts on forest resources could include reduced investment in sustainable forest management and a rise in illegal logging as the decline in the formal economic sector opens opportunities for expansion of the informal sector. Land dependence, which had been easing, could increase, raising the risk of agricultural expansion into forests, deforestation and reversal of previous forest gains. However, there could also be positive impacts – reduced wood demand could lessen pressure on forests, while conversion of forest for large-scale cultivation of commercial crops such as oil-palm, soybeans and rubber could slow as their prices fall."

Corrupted by corporate funding and lobbying in political process

I agree that some businesses are making money out of climate change, through financial derivatives and dodgy carbon offset programs. This is an issue to do with greed and lack of regulation of markets by Government.

Climate change is not the scam, rather it is the political process that has allowed business to run rampant over civil society, to make a few people rich at the expense of the many. And we have allowed our politicians to be corrupted by this process through corporate funding and lobbying in the political process.

Just take a look at the Amazon that has suffered two extreme "1 in 100 year" drought events in the space of five years. If drought events continue, the era of intact Amazon forests buffering the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide may have passed,” a team led by Simon Lewis of Leeds University in the UK writes in a Feb 2011 issue of Science.

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About Me

Time to leap out of the slowly boiling pot of earth's warming climate
into action on climate mitigation and adaption.
I don't want my children to ask why I didn't act after reading the
scientific reports of climate risks. I write on the
effects of human induced climate change, sea level rise, ocean
acidification, biodiversity loss, environmental and social impacts of
global warming, and climate protests from a Melbourne Citizen
Journalist.

A member of environmental NGOs and community groups for 30 years in Australia, currently living in Melbourne. I have been a Citizen journalist for the Indymedia network in Australia and worldwide from 2000, as an editor and contributor with Australia Indymedia and the global features collective. Since 2013 I have contributed many stories to Margot Kingston's citizen journalism website: nofibs.com.au. (See my article archive) I also post photoessays to Flickr and videos to Youtube and edit wikipedia as user Tirin. My website is takver.com where I can be contacted through the feedback form, the most reliable way to contact me. I can also be contacted through facebook and on twitter as @takvera.